Goals of Student Research

• to study a scientific problem that does not have a known outcome.
• to gain first-hand understanding of lab procedures.
• to integrate different types of knowledge in your research, including course material, library  research, and lab research.
• to present your research to others, through a written paper, and oral presentation (303-30200 only).

1.  Research is a course

This is a course.   Treat it as seriously as you would any other course; the faculty will.  While there are no exams that might normally motivate you in other courses, you are evaluated on your performance, and you will receive a grade at the end of the semester.

Think of it this way: if you are a student who is good at budgeting time, and likes to keep up with your studies and assignments, then you should budget time for research, too.  If, however, you are a procrastinator who pulls all-nighters before exams and paper deadlines, then you would have to pull three or four all-nighters for research, too.  Unfortunately, you can’t.  Lab work takes time, and you can’t cram it in at the last minute.  So you must build time for research into your schedule.

The goal of any scientific project is to answer a question or test a hypothesis, however small that question may appear.  You should have a thorough understanding of the question or hypothesis, and understand how your experiments will address it.  While not all projects result in publishable findings, projects are typically planned so that there is this potential.  Clearly, research should not be a repeat of someone else’s published work, although it may build on methods and results of others.

Students should expect to spend at least 3 hours per week on research for each credit hour enrolled, so for 3 credit hours of research, you should expect to spend 10-12 hours per week.  Though this will be mainly lab time, it will also include meetings with your research advisor, library research, and reading articles.  Because of the unusual demands of research (odd hours, procedures performed over several days) it is difficult to apply a time-clock approach to research.  The time that you can devote to research may vary from week to week.  So, while there are weeks in which you may not be able to spend 10 hours on research, there should also be weeks in which you spend more time on research.

Overall, you will be evaluated both on whether you spent a reasonable time in the lab, and how well that time was spent (that is, whether you were actively performing experiments, interpreting results, researching procedures, etc.).

4.  Intellectual involvement

Reading.  Research involves not only collecting data, but also being able to place those data in context, and being able to relate your findings to those of others.  This means that you should have the background necessary to understand how your results fit into the larger body of biological knowledge.  This knowledge can come from a number of sources (for example, courses and discussions with your adviser), but to be a researcher you must be able to find, read and understand primary research articles in your field.  In research, your supervisor will guide you, but you are expected to take an active role; do not expect to do only what you are told.  I typically give copies of relevant articles or chapters in books, to get you started, but you need to search out information on your own.  While it may be very difficult to find more papers on the specific organism (e.g., water mites) in the context of your research project, you can find additional papers on the phenomenon you are studying – think of the big picture.  Also, this library research and reading should be evident in your written report (i.e., review the literature in your introduction, and make connections between your results and other studies in your discussion section).

Thinking.  So: you’ve read the background materials, designed the experiments, and, after much arduous work, you have results in your hand.  Now what?  One of the greatest challenges in performing research is to interpret experiments.  what do the results mean?  Are they what you expected?  If not, are you sure the procedures worked as you expected?  (Were the proper controls performed?)  You will be expected to take an active role in interpreting the results, and in designing the next experiment(s).  Your adviser will, of course, help you in this, but think about your results first.  What do you think they mean?  What other explanations might there be?  What experiment might you perform to confirm or extend the results?

You will write a scientific paper, to be turned in at the end of the semester.  The paper should have an Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results (including applicable figures), Discussion, and References.  This format should be familiar from Literature in Biology, and from your own reading of research papers – the book used in Literature in Biology is an excellent resource, plan to use it when writing your paper.  As with all papers, your first draft will not be sufficient: you will have to write, edit and edit again (and, you must turn in a draft before you get to the final version).   Please be aware of plagiarism: if you take a sentence from someone else’s work and only change one or a couple of words, it is still plagiarism even if you cite the source.  You must rewrite it in your own words.  Plagiarism is a serious offense of academic misconduct: check the student handbook for details, but it can lead to judicial proceedings and even expulsion from the college.  Each idea has to be referenced (and in the sentence where the idea appears), you cannot simply cite the reference once at the end of a paragraph containing many ideas from the same source.  In such cases, you can avoid referencing each idea yet still indicate your source through careful writing,

e.g.:
“Roberts and Janovy (1985) were the first to study this phenomenon.  They found that ..., further, when the ... .  R
Roberts and Janovy go on to state that ... and their conclusion was... .”

Or,

“Roberts and Janovy (1985) were the first to study this phenomenon.  In the following paragraph, I will review their work. .....”

The talk should be less formal than the paper.  The talk will cover the same areas as the paper, but because you need to present more background to an audience of non-specialists, expect to spend more time on the Introduction, and less on Methods.  You will also need to spend some time thinking about how to (visually) present ideas to the audience – figures are more useful than tables in a talk, but the reverse may be true in a written paper.  We have a digital camera available and there is a scanner in the BioCenter, you can easily incorporate lots of graphics into your talk.  Pictures are especially valuable when trying to explain experimental setups, and introducing the organisms.

Keep to bulleted points in your powerpoint: if people have to read a lot of words, they stop listening to you or tune-out.  Just as you need to edit a paper, so will you have to practice your talk; assume that you’ll need several practice runs before the talk is ready to deliver.  Reading a talk is unacceptable, and use of cue-cards is very unprofessional. Use the powerpoint as your notes, to jog your memory: if you have practiced your talk adequately, you should remember the details after being cued by the powerpoint.

 There are several purposes behind weekly meetings:

- ensuring regular communication with me
- ensuring that we promptly identify and solve any problems before they become serious
- practising oral presentation of your research
- ensuring steady progress on your research thus minimizing the "crunch" at the end of semester

Don't hesitate to discuss your problems or to ask questions: these meetings must be open forums, I would never penalize anyone for bringing up difficulties or for posing questions (even if you think you should know the answer).

 I can forgive one missed deadline per semester (except those labelled on the schedule as "essential", "critical" or "absolute" - these cannot be missed), but beyond that it will hurt your final grade.  Deadlines near the end of the semester are critical in that I need to budget my time for teaching, etc., so missing a due date may

Grading is largely based upon the final paper which is concrete evidence of what you accomplished during the semester:

- how much effort went into your research in general, and this report in specific?
- did you search out and integrate related scientific literature?

 - were related papers integrated into a cohesive and comprehensive introduction?
 - did you establish connections between your  results and relevant published works?

- did you demonstrate that you had a clear understanding of the topic?
- was the Material and Methods section sufficient that someone else could replicate the study?
- were your tables and figures correctly presented, with appropriate captions?
- how well organized was your paper?
- was your paper proofread and free of grammatical and spelling errors?

- did you make the deadlines?
- were the assignments well-done, or rushed because of a deadline?
- were you putting sufficient time and effort into research throughout the semester?

- was your work well-documented (i.e., notes and data were organized and complete)?
- were your organisms kept properly?

 - properly labeled, fed, and cleaned when necessary?

- was your work area kept reasonably clean and uncluttered?
- did you clean your glass/plastic ware during the semester, and put equipment, supplies, and organisms away at the end of the semester?

- how well done was your oral presentation?

 - was it clear, easily understood, and well organized?
 - had you put a reasonable amount of effort into it?

note: with oral presentations, I expect that people will be nervous, I would never grade someone down because of being nervous or misspeaking.

While the ultimate goal of any research is typically to have publishable results, it is a great challenge to achieve this within one semester.  While lack of effort could be the cause, more often it is because of complications or problems beyond our control.  Clearly, this is beyond what is expected in the course and doesn’t enter into the grading, but a resultant publication is a personal achievement and a valuable addition to your resume / curriculum vitae.  Sometimes, work from several similar research projects can be combined to produce a publishable paper.  Constraints on time and the process of submission, acceptance/rejection, and revisions can (and regularly does) take years – especially if several research projects are being incorporated into one paper.  Consequently, you need to keep in touch after you leave the lab and Ithaca College!  I will always give people due credit for their work, but to be an author on a paper, you need to see and approve the manuscript. Most journals now require you to sign a release that agree with the presentation and that the results are not published or submitted elsewhere.  If I can send you a copy (and release, if required) and get your approval, then you will be a coauthor - but if I can’t get a response or cannot find you, I can only give you credit in the acknowledgements.  Order of authorship reflects the amount of work: if I planned the study and provided the methods, and had to extensively rewrite the paper, then I may take first authorship; if you did most of the work (with appropriate guidance from me), you will be first author.